Philippine police on Wednesday filed a criminal complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte and her security staff for assaulting security officers and disobeying their orders during an altercation at the House of Representatives on Saturday.
Duterte had a busy day on Saturday, having publicly claimed that she hired an assassin to kill President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., along with his wife and his cousin Martin Romualdez, who is House speaker, if she herself dies. She did this not in heated private conversation but at a news conference, in which she claimed Marcos was planning to have her killed and her hitman was standing by to take him and his wife out in retaliation.
The Philippine police and military immediately raised the alert level around President Marcos and increased his security, while the National Security Council declared Duterte a threat to national security and the justice system announced it would summon her for an investigation.
Duterte sought to walk back her threat, sort of, by assuring the public she would only kill the president if he killed her first.
“Why would I kill him if not for revenge from the grave? There is no reason for me to kill him. What’s the benefit for me?” she said at her damage-control press conference.
None of this had any direct bearing on why the police decided to file charges against the vice president. That happened because her chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, had been placed under detention last week for demonstrating contempt of the House during a corruption inquiry, and when the House voted to extend her detention on Saturday, Duterte and her security detail got rowdy.
Lopez and Duterte are both under investigation for misusing funds from the office of the vice presidency. Lopez was cited for contempt and sent into detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) last Wednesday. Her offense was skipping a hearing on November 5, ostensibly to visit her sick aunt in the United States.
Lopez angered House investigators by giving evasive answers about the abuse of funds, often claiming she had no idea where any of the money went. Lopez was at least calm and polite during her testimony, unlike the volatile Duterte, but she reportedly suffered from panic attacks after she was sent into detention.
Lopez had another panic attack on Saturday, when the House ordered her to be transferred from the relatively comfortable VMMC to a women’s prison, at which point Duterte raised both verbal and physical objections. The police said it was necessary to file charges against her to preserve the rule of law.
On Tuesday, Duterte was served a subpoena to answer questions about her threats against the president’s life. Marcos said he intends to prosecute her for participating in a “criminal plot” to have him assassinated.
Duterte’s father, the equally outspoken former president Rodrigo Duterte, waded into the controversy on Monday by suggesting the military should consider overthrowing Marcos.
“There is a fractured governance in the Philippines today. In the face of so many errors there… it is only the military who can correct it,” he said.
The elder Duterte demonstrated where his daughter learned her damage-control skills by adding that he was not calling for a coup, but was rather calling for the military to commit mass insubordination, or perhaps go on strike to protest Marcos’ leadership.
“They can just say we no longer want to play your game, we’re out,” he explained, calling on military officers to reject the commands of the “drug addict” Marcos.
Marcos and his predecessor have taken to accusing each other of drug abuse on a regular basis. In August, a video that purportedly showed Marcos snorting cocaine began circulating on social media. Marcos and his officials dismissed the video as a deepfake, while Rodrigo Duterte insisted it was authentic and said Marcos could only answer the allegations of substance abuse by taking a drug test.
These events make it difficult to remember that Marcos, Jr., chose Sara Duterte as his running mate in 2022 in an effort to build “unity” following the end of Rodrigo Duterte’s tempestuous administration. Both Marcos and the younger Duterte won landslide victories for their positions, which are voted on separately in the Philippines.
Their relationship soon went sour for various reasons, including angry disagreements about how to handle China. Duterte resigned from her position as education secretary in the Marcos cabinet in June, about six months after her father began referring to President Marcos Jr. as a drug addict. She remains vice president, and Marcos cannot fire her, since it is an elected position.